Telephone lines, which are carried by electrical conductors known as tip ring wire pairs, are generally aggregated at a particular point in a building prior to being distributed and connected to various types of telephone equipment, such as, for example, telephones, fax machines, modems etc. As the tip ring pairs generally enter the building as part of a multiconductor cable, the individual tip ring wire pairs must first be broken out from the cable into individual wire pairs. This is normally accomplished in a junction box known as, for example, a building entrance protector (BEP), or network interface unit (NIU). Within such devices the individual telephone line tip ring pairs are separated from the cable, individually connected to a connector block, and made available for further electrical connection and distribution. Usually, there is a protector device inserted between the telephone and central office, or network side of the telephone line and the customer equipment or terminal side of the telephone line to protect the telephone and user, or other equipment connected to the telephone line, from hazardous overvoltages induced in the telephone network or in the cables passing between the telephone central office and the building within which the line is terminated.
In a typical arrangement, the telephone lines coming from the network are first wired to a protector field, which is an array of connectors for receiving the protector device, which is in turn hard wired to a first connector block which provides a first test point for testing the telephone line connections between the building and telephone central office. This first terminal block is hard wired to a multi pair connector, most typically a twenty-five pair connector of the RJ21 type, for further connection to an array of customer bridges which are also hard wired and connectorized via a mating RJ21 connector. A plurality of customer bridges are placed in the junction box which enables a subscriber to easily disconnect terminal equipment, such as a telephone device, from a telephone line so that the subscriber can isolate troubles on the line as originating in the telephone network, or on the terminal equipment side of the telephone line. An example of such an arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,440, dated Nov. 8, 1994, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Presently known customer bridges utilize screw-type binding post connectors for the attachment of the subscriber device wiring, which are labor intensive to wire.
Often, telephone devices installed at a particular location are serially connected to a single wire pair run connected to a customer bridge. This may be accomplished by routing a twisted pair from the particular customer bridge in the junction box to a telephone device at a first location and from the first telephone device location to a second telephone device location and so on. However, a drawback with serially configuring multiple telephone devices in such manner is that if a failure occurs anywhere along the chain each of the wiring segments between each of the telephone devices must be separately tested to locate the fault. It is possible to couple more than one telephone device to a customer bridge in parallel by connecting multiple wires to each of the post connectors on the customer bridge. Such a configuration, however, is undesirable because connecting more than one wire to a single post connector, especially wires of different gauges, results in an unreliable connection. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a wiring system that supports multiple telephone devices from a single customer bridge in which troubleshooting is simplified.